


to be announced

by lyricalprose (fairylights)



Series: 2013 Fic Advent Calendar [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 2013 Fic Advent Calendar, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairylights/pseuds/lyricalprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But–” The Doctor manages to finish doing up his trousers, then comes to sit beside her on their bed. “Won’t it be different? I mean, <i>she’s</i> not the one having the baby, this time.”</p><p>“Oh, it’ll be different, all right,” Rose mutters darkly. “It’ll be <i>worse.</i>”</p>
            </blockquote>





	to be announced

**Author's Note:**

> dryadalis asked “TenToo and Rose are pregnant, only Rose wants to keep it quiet. TenToo accidentally lets it slip in a big way on accident, and Jackie is furious because she's the last one to know.”
> 
> Fill #3 for my 2013 fic advent calendar.

“You know,” Rose says lazily, as she drags her fingers across the Doctor’s bare back, “we can’t be quite that loud anymore, after I actually _have_ this baby.”  
  
 _“Hnmgf,”_ the Doctor responds unintelligibly, into the pillow his face is buried in.  
  
Rose smiles fondly and skates her fingers up the Doctor’s spine, over his neck and into his hair.  
  
It’s been three hours and two celebratory shags since they looked at that little stick and saw a plus sign, and Rose still feels giddy – flushed with excitement and happiness, with contentment and nerves and the best kind of exhaustion.  
  
The Doctor makes a deeply contented sound before slowly hauling himself up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and beginning to root around on the ground for his discarded clothes. “We’ve got time!” he says cheerfully. “Plenty of time. Time for plenty of volume, in – ooh! Plenty of places, too, I’m sure.”  
  
He lets out a pleased, victorious _ha!_ upon locating his pants and pulling them on. “Not now, though. Now, we can _tell_ people! Your mum and Pete, of course, and–”  
  
“No!” Rose pops bolt upright in bed, and the Doctor freezes in place.  
  
“What?” He sounds panicked and looks frazzled, with his trousers pulled halfway up his legs and his hair still outrageously mussed from their most recent celebratory shag, and Rose has to fight down an irrepressible surge of sheer fondness before she can speak again.  
  
“You can’t – I don’t want to tell anyone,” she mumbles, suddenly feeling silly. “ _Especially_ not my mum. Not yet.”  
  
The Doctor looks decidedly puzzled. “Why?”  
  
“You weren’t here, when she was pregnant with Tony,” Rose says miserably, flopping back onto the bed and gathering the sheets around her. “It was a _nightmare._ Soon as she found out, it was months an’ months of baby names and booties and shopping and knitting and–” She sighs. There’d also been a fair bit of _one day you’ll have children of your own and **then** you’ll enjoy this sort of thing._  
  
Once Tony was born, once she’d seen him and held him and fell in love with his flyaway ginger hair and, later, his infectious toddler smile, she’d felt a little bad about being such a wet blanket, the whole time her mum was pregnant. But at the time–  
  
At the time, it had only been weeks since Bad Wolf Bay, and every outing to search for baby clothes, every casual remark from her mum about how they’d be doing this for Rose someday – they’d felt like nails being driven into the lid of a coffin, pinning her into a life she didn’t really want.  
  
“But–” The Doctor manages to finish doing up his trousers, then comes to sit beside her on their bed. “Won’t it be different? I mean, _she’s_ not the one having the baby, this time.”  
  
“Oh, it’ll be different, all right,” Rose mutters darkly. “It’ll be _worse._ ” She can already picture it. She loves her mother, she really does, but eight and a half months of being hovered over by the Doctor is going to be trying enough without her mother pitching in. She _wants_ this, she does – it’s not a coffin or a pen anymore – but the thought of all the trappings still makes her feel woozy in a way that’s got nothing to do with morning sickness.  
  
“Come on, Rose,” the Doctor says, idly running his hand through her hair. “We can’t exactly _not_ tell her.”  
  
“We _could,_ ” Rose says mutinously.  
  
“Rose, your mother’s a–” He pauses for a moment, as if searching for an appropriate word. “–a _decently_ sensible woman. It’ll be all right.”  
  
“I need this on tape,” Rose mutters. “The Doctor, advocating for my mum’s good sense.”  
  
The Doctor scowls at her. “You’ll have that on tape over my dead body.”  
  
She sits up again, lacing her own fingers together and twisting them this way and that. “I’d just like it if this could just be… _ours_ , for a little while. Before we have to share it. I mean, for a while we thought we might not ever – that we couldn’t–”  
  
“Rose.” The Doctor’s voice cuts her off, and his hands reach down to tangle their fingers together. When she looks up to meet his eyes, he gives her a soft smile and says, “Okay.”  
  
—  
  
It stays a secret for approximately three weeks – which, all things considered, is longer than Rose expected.  
  
The Doctor is so excited he just can’t keep his mouth shut; he tells Jake, who tells Pete, who blabs it to Tony, who tells his mother, because eight-year-olds can’t be trusted to keep secrets.  
  
(Rose will swear, later on, that they could probably hear the screeching on the Isle of Wight).


End file.
